If we all pattern our behavior after the worst examples available to us then all is truly lost.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Worst Commander in Chief Ever

Calling Mr. Bush the "worst commander in chief ever" brings wails of outrage from certain corners, but the sobriquet is a fairly easy one to justify. Bush is, after all, the first U.S. president to lead the country into two failed wars. And make no mistake--regardless of how they turn out, our excursions in Afghanistan and Iraq have failed. That the "best-trained, best-equipped" military force in history is mired in two third-world sand bunkers sends a clear message that America's days of being able to dictate global affairs through use of armed conflict are over for good.

Keep in mind that the Bush administration didn't necessarily embark on two bad wars purposely. It launched one good war--Afghanistan--that went bad when the administration left the job unfinished and diverted assets and national energies to the bad war in Iraq.

Jewels of Denial

In the Sunday August 12 New York Times, David Rhode and David E. Sanger related how the administration snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Afghanistan.

In "How a ‘Good War’ in Afghanistan Went Bad," Rhode and Sanger write that after the early success of the 2001 war, "American intelligence agencies had reported that the Taliban were so decimated they no longer posed a threat." Two years after the Taliban fell to American-led coalition forces, "the top C.I.A. specialists and elite Special Forces units who had helped liberate Afghanistan had long since moved on to the next war, in Iraq."

Troops were diverted, intelligence-gathering resources like predator unmanned aerial vehicles were diverted, reconstruction funds were diverted. "We were economizing in Afghanistan," a former senior official of Central Command told Rhode and Sanger. “We’re simply in a world of limited resources, and those resources are in Iraq,” the former official added. “Anyone who tells you differently is blowing smoke.”

And guess who's trying to tell us differently.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who was National Security Advisor at the time of the virtual abandonment of the Afghanistan effort, says, “I don’t buy the argument that Afghanistan was starved of resources.”

National Security Adviser Steven J. Hadley, who was Rice's deputy during the first Bush term of office, insists that there was no diversion of resources from Afghanistan.

Robert D. Blackwill, who was in charge of both Afghanistan and Iraq policy at the National Security Council, claims that "…where we find ourselves now may have been close to inevitable, whether the U.S. went into Iraq or not.”

And they wonder why people make fun of them.

The Rear View Mirror

Given the unnatural disaster that our foreign policy under the Bush II administration has been, it's little wonder that the likes of Condi Rice and Steven Hadley still display such Rumsfeldian denial about it. For years now, administration stalwarts and supporters have been erasing their history faster than they can accuse their political opposition of rewriting it. These days, many argue that we have to stop looking backward, and quit playing the blame game, and concentrate on the future. If you take a look at who's saying that, though, you'll notice it's mostly a) members of the administration, b) Republicans who have been Bush liegemen all along, c) conspicuous neoconservatives like Bill Kristol and d) Democrats who voted for the war in Iraq and consistently cave when its time to vote on bills that might reign the administration in.

We need to take a good look at what's happened on Bush's watch for a number of reasons. First and foremost among them is that Bush is still in power, and despite the departures of the likes of Scooter Libby and Donald Rumsfeld and now Karl Rove, a hell of a lot of the folks who brought us our fiasco in the Middle East are still on the job. They can still do a whole bunch of damage and they have plenty of time to do it.

Second, they've spawned follow on generations of young neoconservative Republicans who believe--like Cheney, Rumsfeld and other neophytes of the political right during the Nixon era did--that "we would have succeeded if only…" Believe me, the neo-conservative movement has more lives than the monster in a summer horror film franchise, and they'll be back.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to remember the consequences of the philosophy that America's first, best destiny in the post-Soviet era was to make itself into a post-modern Roman Empire. In a September 2005 article, I wrote "Empires rise, empires fall. Some land softly, some crash into the back pages of other civilizations' history books. Almost without exception, empires that ended badly failed to understand that the military power that established them was not, in itself, sufficient to sustain them."

It seems I'm not the only one who worries that America will repeat the mistakes of hegemons of the past. David Walker, the United States Comptroller General, is concerned that the United States, like the Roman Republic and other organizations that failed to adapt "may not survive."

In a speech in Chicago last week, Walker, who heads the non-partisan Government Accounting Office, noted "striking similarities" between today's America and Rome in its final days: “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government."

"In my view," he said, "it's time to learn from history and take steps to ensure the American Republic is the first to stand the test of time."

I'm in wholehearted agreement with Mr. Walker on that score, and there's no better history to learn from than the history of America's past six years. If investigation of that history leads to a few more members of the Bush administration spending time in the big house, so be it. And while I have no expectation that the worst commander in chief ever will be impeached and convicted, if that were to happen, I wouldn't mind it one bit.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books) will be available on March 1, 2008.

5 comments:

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said: “I don’t buy the argument that Afghanistan was starved of resources.”

Ya know, once upon a time I thought she was the best and the brightest, and she MAY be, but if so, this is really a sad situation...

And Steven J. Hadley insists that there was no diversion of resources from Afghanistan?? Horse pucky... You know better, I know better, anyone that was ever in a command situation knows better...

Jeff, you know, I had absolutely no qualms about going to Afghanistan, that was the right move at the right time against the right enemy but as soon as Bush started his attempt to 'sell' Iraq as the next mission, I knew that we were in DEEP POOP right then, and so did anyone that was ever connected to the Intel community, Iraq is nothing more than the actions of a child trying to vindicate his Daddy, I have posted that on numerous occasions on my own blog, and some folks see it, others don't, we had NO business going to Iraq when we did, if ever we needed to...

At worst, Saddam was a threat to the region, and his own people, Saddam didn't present a viable threat to the USA, that was the biggest crock of crap to come down the line in a long time...

And in my estimation, removing Saddam was likely the worst move we could have made, speaking strictly from an Intel guy standpoint, Saddam was more valuable to us in place, and had we made the effort, I honestly believe that Saddam likely could have been turned into an asset with just a little bit of work...

Saddam held Iran in check, there was NO insurgency in Iraq under Saddams regime, they knew better than to challenge Saddam, he couldn't stop the power of the U.S. military but he had his thumb on Iraq and I would love to have seen him developed...

The 'Mission Accomplished' thing set me off, Bush was crowing like an idiot over taking down an army that was still decimated from the ass-kicking they suffered in Gulf 1, the carrier landing was the worst produced PR stunt that ever happened to a president, and the 'Mission Accomplished' BS will haunt Bush until his dying day...

And now we have far right moonbats trying to make folks believe the surge is working, well, to some degree it is working, bombings are down something like 50% in Baghdad I am told, and thats a good thing, but the bombers that were in Baghdad are now hitting other, softer targets, reference the attack yesterday where the numbers just keep climbing, at last report the death toll in the area of Qahataniya is over 250 killed, and I have seriously pissed off a so-called conservative site that is adamant that the surge is working by asking them, "I wonder how the people of Qahataniya feel about the success of the surge?? Do you think they feel like it’s working?? I wonder, are they happy with the current situation in Baghdad??" Four Suicide Bombings Kill 175 in Iraq

We WON the war, that was a ‘gimme’, but we have blown the ‘peace’ all to hell and back, and that lies solely in the lap of one Mr. George W. Bush...

Keep firing Jeff, some folks can see the point, thank God MOST folks see the point, but there's always going to be what I call 'Bush Bots', and they are few now, but they will continue to sing his praises as long as they draw breath, right up until the time the SOB destroys America and everything we ever stood for...

Calling Bush the worst CiC ever, I think that is one very fair evaluation of his skills to date...

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (retired) was a naval flight officer who commanded an aircraft squadron and was operations officer of USS Theodore Roosevelt, the carrier that fought the Kosovo War. He earned a master-of-arts degree in post-modern imperialism at the U.S. Naval War College where many of his essays became required student reading. Jeff’s weekly satires on U.S. foreign policy high jinks appear at Antiwar.com and his critically applauded novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Jeff lives with dogs in a house by the beach on Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, and in the summer he has a nice tan.